I had this beer the other day from The Black Sheep Brewery, and just the other day beerrag.com had a post about it, too. Small world ("small web"?)!

Riggwelter is a pretty good beer. The Black Sheep website says there's banana fruit aromas, but I didn't get that from it. It was rich and malty, and a bit sweet. Copper-brown color, nice rich head on it. On BeerAdvocate many of the reviews mention the nice lacing, which I concur on. It also accumulates a respectable score of 86 over there.

At 5.7% alcohol, it's not terribly strong, but it comes in larger-than-average bottle, so it's akin to drinking two 12-ounce bottles of an average beer. :)

Overall, an enjoyable beer. Unfortunately, I probably won't find it here in Bend very often, unless one of the upscale grocers carries it.

Today's the first day of the Great American Beer Festival—I almost missed blogging about this (for shame!). The size of this thing is beyond comprehension: 1,669 beers are on tap, 2,358 beers are entered in the competition and 461 breweries are there. It's basically the beer festival mecca.

One of these years, I'm gonna go. And I'll blog it. In the meantime, though, I'll start scanning for other bloggers' reviews of the GABF.

Even Anheuser-Busch is getting into the season, releasing a pumpkin beer: Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale. It's being offered under the Michelob label.

Under development for the last year, the new program will offer different beers to match each of the four seasons, said John Costello, product manager, Michelob Specialty Brands at A-B's domestic brewing subsidiary.

Using pumpkin for the fall beer seemed a natural choice, he said. "I like to describe Jack's as a wicked blend of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove and real delicious pumpkins."

It should also show up in the Michelob Special Sampler Collection, according to the article.

Picked up a sixpack of Pumpkin Ale from Buffalo Bill's Brewing (they who made the interesting Orange Blossom Ale I reviewed a while back) this weekend. Of the very few commercial pumpkin beers I've had, I think this is the best of them. (Not to say it's the best out there; I just don't have access to many.)

It's a decent beer, pretty much what you'd expect from a pumpkin ale: copper-amber color, malty sweet, pumpkin pie essence. It's a little on the light side, in both alcohol and mouthfeel. But, as far as this style goes, you could do a lot worse; I'd recommend it to someone who's never tried a pumpkin ale before (if I didn't have any of my own homebrewed pumpkin on hand, of course), and, it's cheap—I picked it up for $5.99 for the sixpack, which around here is a good deal for microbrews.

The beer didn't fare as well on BeerAdvocate; it only got an overall score of 77 and many reviews are not kind.

Now I'll have to start checking other places in town and see if anyone carries other examples of pumpkin ales...

It's getting to be that time of year again, time for some pumpkin beer! This article reviews six pumpkin ales and lists them in order from worst to best. The reviewer is not kind to the four worst.

6. Post Road Pumpkin Ale — The most robust of the gourd grogs, the rust-hued Post Road doesn't taste much better than tap water after a hydrant flushing. With an extremely bitter initiation that finishes with a pumpkin-like aftertaste, this brew leaves your mouth in a state of confusion.

5. Wachusetts Octoberfest — A shoddy imitation of Sammy's seasonal brew, Wachusetts has that sweet fragrant aroma without the smoothness. It lacks any pumpkin punch, but does produce a great head that tingles your lips....

1. Shipyard PumkinHead Ale — Shipyard takes the cake by resembling a liquid pumpkin pie. All that's missing is the whip cream and a fork. The spicy strawberry blond beverage has distinct nutmeg undertones and lacks that bitter beer aftertaste. Great for the light or occasional beer drinker with a sweet tooth.

Also, check out my pumpkin ale recipe, or see all pumpkin-related Brew Site content.

The Village Voice has a good roundup of New York microbreweries here. Not a huge article, but it highlights and links to 10 breweries, only a couple of which I'd heard of before.

Abita Brewing Company just north of New orleans is brewing a special beer and offering special merchandise to raise money for Katrina aid, reports the Beer Travelers blog and Realbeer.com.

Half Moon Bay Brewing Company is matching donations dollar for dollar for disaster relief.

Cambridge Brewing Company is hosting a Katrina benefit Mardi Gras on October 8th, donating a portion of the sales.

Sprecher Brewing Company has donation links set up on their website and they "are looking to sponsor a Hurricane Relief Benefit at Linneman's September 23rd or 24th."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

It's creeping up on us: Oktoberfest starts this Saturday, September 17th, and ends on October 2nd. I don't have much to say on Oktoberfest itself that I didn't say last year (I really like what I wrote, so why try to improve on that?), so I'll just start doling out links.

• Raise a stein to Oktoberfest: article about The Great Escape's Oktoberfest celebration, in Lake George, New York.
• Get Out the Lederhosen and Steins: press release/article for Lake Arrowhead Village's (in California) Oktoberfest. Includes a bit about food that goes with Oktoberfest.
• Everyone's Bavarian at Oktoberfest: About Mt. Angel's Oktoberfest, it's 40 this year! It's also starting today and running through Sunday. Sounds like a lot of fun.
• Don't miss Realbeer.com's Oktoberfest guide.

While in Juneau on the cruise, we took a taxi to the Alaskan Brewing Company to see the operation, drink some beer and buy some souvenirs. And take some pictures, of course. Read on for the full review and photos.

More...

Sounds a little strange, but: a French farmer has created a milk beer.

The new drink, Lactiwel, made from milk and malt, contains 2% alcohol and is brewed using a fermentation process similar to that of traditional beer, except that instead of ale or lager yeast, Bernard uses kefir (Turkish milk product) yeast and lactic bacteria.

Sounds like it might be similar to kumis, a fermented mare's milk found in Central Asia.

First found reference to this here, an online French newspaper. I can read some of it (it's in French), but I don't really see anything that describes how the Lactiwel actually tastes or anything.

It's good to see breweries pitching in and helping in whatever way they can in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Here's a few pointers:

• Anheuser-Busch brewery bottling water for hurricane relief: AB has got several of their breweries canning drinking water and delivering it to the Gulf Coast.
• Here's a picture of one of those cans of drinking water on Flickr.
• Brewery, employees donate $24,000: Our local Deschutes Brewery matched employee contributions and raised a good chunk of money.
• Miller Brewing Company Boosts Water Commitment to Aid Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts: Miller is donating water and is donating up to $1,000,000.

I'm sure there's many, many more stories here. Let me know and I'll post them.

Hail the Ale is reporting that "German designers want male drinkers at Oktoberfest in Munich to wear skirts this year." Oktoberfest Frock.

Er... that's just too strange.

Actually, "Oktoberfest Frock" sounds like a good name for a beer. How long before someone brews it?

Since going on the cruise I've been thinking about beers on cruises. As I mentioned, the beer menu on our cruise had a paltry selection: Miller, Coors, Bud, and the couple of breakouts Bass Ale and Foster's Lager. (There was probably Heineken and Beck's, too, I don't recall for sure.) Needless to say, I was hoping for a better offering.

The wine list on the ship, on the other hand, was expansive. You could buy wine packages for the cruise, each package staggered in pricing and having its own list of wines, or simply order from the considerable general wine list. This of course got me thinking, if they can have such a large selection of wines, why not beers?

Take it a step further, and also offer beer packages similar to the wine packages: for X dollars you get Y beers a day, from a variety of package options. Each package of course has a wide variety of brews, and recommendations on what food they are best paired with.

And, the ship could feature beers from whatever region you are currently sailing. So, Alaskan cruises could feature beers from the Alaskan Brewing Company (a vintage Smoked Porter to go with a plank-baked salmon, perhaps) and other regional breweries (like Granville Island Brewing in Vancouver).

Seems odd that they don't do more of this, so I did some quick searches online, and surprisingly, found some hits:

• Frommer's The Beer-Drinker's Guide to Cruising, Part I and Part II. Interestingly, Part II talks about beers available on the cruise lines, and says this:

  Coming in a close second is Royal Caribbean (www.royalcaribbean.com), whose regular 35-brand list includes quality brews like Bass; Boddington's; Foster's (in the 25-ounce oil can!); Harp, Murphy's Stout, and Murphy's Amber (Ireland); Kirin and Asahi (Japan); Newcastle Brown Ale (UK) and Singha (Thailand). On Alaska sailings, RCI's ships stock Midnight Sun's Fireweed Honey Wheat Beer and Kodiak Nut Brown Ale (brewed in Anchorage); Grant's Hefe Weizen and Lazy Days Summer Ale (Washington) and Alaska Brewing Company's Alaskan Amber, Alaskan Pale Ale, and Alaskan ESB.

  Man, I must've gotten the short end of the stick or something. Hell, maybe I didn't ask the right questions...
• All About Beer Magazine is promoting Brew Cruises... but it looks to me like they might just be regular cruises with beer-related offerings at each stop. Though looking at the Alaska cruise—which is what we did—the only "local beer culture" you find on that run is in Juneau.
• On the other hand, here's a series of blog posts from someone who went on a brew cruise (to Alaska even). Sounds way better than I was imagining.
• BellaOnline has a short article about Beer Prices on Cruise Ships.

So maybe my next cruise will be a beer cruise...

We only spent a night (and part of a morning) in Vancouver, B.C., not enough time to find out if and where any breweries existed there. At least, not until we ate at a restaurant and I found the Granville Island Brewery on the menu. (Incidentally, the restaurant was Joe Fortes and it was really good.)

I had two of Granville's beers: the Maple Cream Ale and the Pale Ale. The Maple Cream Ale was really quite extraordinary, possibly the best cream ale I've had; not a trace of bitterness to it, hop or otherwise—even my wife liked it (and she absolutely hates beers... except for fruit lambics). The maple was understated but the beer overall was creamy and rich and smooth and just a pleasure to drink.

The Pale Ale, on the other hand, was unremarkable, "just another" pale ale. Not bad by any means, it was a good example of the style, but after the Maple Cream Ale it was just business as usual. It's too bad we never got a chance to visit the brewery itself; I would have enjoyed tasting their various brews.

Maybe next time we're in Vancouver...

Some pointers to a couple of offbeat articles (still going through my backlog of beer news):

• Bring back the gusto!: An essay on the word "gusto" and how Schlitz ruined it in the 1960's:

  Although the ''gusto" campaign ended almost 40 years ago, the damage to the word was done. There may be some who are able to stick ''gusto" into a sentence without thinking beer, but certainly no one who was born before 1960.

  I know I don't associate "gusto" with beer, but it's an interesting read.
• Congress Considers Beer a Luxury—But Not Mink Coats, Private Jets, or Yachts: Notes on trying to roll back the federal excise tax on beer, which was raised in 1990 along with the tax on other luxury items, all of which have been rolled back except for the beer tax.